Spaced-out project teams

One of my favorite podcasters and all-around good guys is Wayne Turmel.

Besides running a business which reduces a whole lot of unneeded carbon footprint (http://greatwebmeetings.com) he hosts a great podcast called "The Cranky Middle Manager".

On a recent episode (number 240, I think!) he interviewed Charlie Pellerin, formerly of NASA.

I won't give away too much of the podcast, and urge you to listen to it (link here).

The reason I'm posting is to also point you to the resources available on Charlie Pellerin's company's site.

You'll find Powerpoint presentations to download which vibrantly illustrate the concepts of social context and how that can have just as much - if not more - impact on your project as the technical aspects. Have a look.

An upcoming seminar on Project Risk - Mark Your Calendars

The Gulf oil spill crisis is in day 58. Debate continues on the amount of oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon well, but it's clear that this disaster easily beats the Exxon Valdez.

And BP has now pledge to pay $20B (yes Billion) to a fund that will support the Gulf. See this link.


What type of project risk identification, analysis, planning, and response did the responsible (and I use that word lightly) parties have?

We'll be discussing this and much more in an inexpensive 2-day seminar run by yours truly for EPM Solutions.

The seminar, entitled "A Question of Balance", runs two nights, and is given via Webinar. The schedule calls for it to run on 27 and 29 July (Tuesday and Thursday nights, 6PM to 8:30PM Eastern US time.

It'll earn you 5 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from an REP (Registered Education Provider).


Details are here:

http://www.enterprisepmsolutions.com/?p=979

The webinar will allow you to:

• Gain a deeper, more integrated understanding of how risk affects a project
• Translate this into how this affects the planning of your projects
• Collect, understand, and use advice and tools for risk identification
• Improve your capabilities in risk analysis
• Expand their capabilities of developing effective risk responses
• Reaffirm the importance of continuing, ongoing risk management

Don't risk missing it!

Promoting PM amongst our younger students...

I recently (today, actually) had a chance to represent the profession of Project Management at the Coolidge Middle School in Reading, Massachusetts.

In three 30-minute sessions, I used an interactive presentation to brainstorm the project of developing and making available to the market, a green (ecologically, that is) car. My audience was the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders (one grade at a time).

Although I was in competition with a policeman in full uniform and other "cooler" jobs, I think things went swimmingly. I enjoyed it, and my daughter, an English teacher at the school, tells me that from her perspective in the audience - it worked. I had fun, they had...well, perhaps "fun" is too strong of a word, but they seemed to "get it" when I asked them what they picked up from the session.

I used three exercises:

1. A brainstorming session to identify stakeholders
2. A live WBS creation session
3. A brainstorming session to identify risks and then treat the risk, "the car is ugly"

I closed with some examples of PM jobs and an actual snippet from a job posting site showing all of the PM jobs available.

I think this worked much better than lecturing to them.

If any of you PMs who end up getting invited to a Career Day would like a copy of the presentation, I'm glad to make it available to you. Actually I am working with the LEAD Community of Practice of PMI to see how I can share the document within their structure. If that fails, I'll make it available right here on the blog. If you need it right away, contact me through the blog.

Let's keep PM vital by making its wisdom available to our youngest students!